New OBA Section TLA Awards Lawyer And Baker Extraordinaire Law Times Poll
The Ontario Bar Association is launching an elder law section. The section will handle elder abuse, age discrimination, old-age planning, housing, mental capacity and consent, care facility regulation, guardianship and health-care decision-making and all other issues affecting senior citizens.
Elder section chairman Steven Benmor says his group will also focus on informing the public and legal professionals about the specific legal issues faced by seniors in order for everyone to identify when their rights are being violated.
“I realized there’s this mammoth population, with very unique needs, who weren’t being serviced by any particular section of the OBA, but more importantly, they weren’t being serviced as an area of law,” he says.
The number of Ontarians over 65 is expected to double to 4.6 million people before 2041, making up 25 per cent of the population according to a 2016 census.
“If the legislation is provincial, and if the largest number of seniors in Canada reside in Ontario, it just seemed fairly obvious that there should be an elder law section at the Ontario Bar Association,” Benmor says.
The Toronto Lawyers Association has announced its 2018 award recipients. The Honsberger Award will go to Ian M. Hull of Hull and Hull LLP, while John I. Laskin of the Ontario Court of Appeal will receive the Award of Distinction, according to a TLA press release.
Hull has supported the Lawyers Feed the Hungry Program, is chairman of the Law Society Foundation’s board of directors and a regular guest lecturer for other law associations.
Hull and Laskin will receive their awards at the 18th annual TLA Awards reception on March 8, 2018 at the King Edward Hotel.
One doesn’t usually think of “lawyer” and “baker” as shared skillsets, but Toronto lawyer Corey Shefman is proving that otherwise.
Shefman is an associate at Olthuis Kleer Townshend LLP who is putting his amateur baking skills to the test as a contestant on the new CBC television program The Great Canadian Baking Show, which premiered Nov. 1.
“I mostly applied because I thought it would just be a fun story to tell. I never thought I would actually be picked as one of the top 10 amateur home bakers in Canada,” he says, explaining that contestants had to be put through an application and audition process.
The show is Canada’s answer to the popular British version, The Great British Bake Off, and was filmed this past summer.
Law Times reported there is a growing trend of young adults living in the family home, leading to a demand for child support that flows past childhood into adulthood.
Readers were asked if this a trend they had observed.
About 67 per cent said yes, young adults are requiring more support than ever to attain independence, and this has legal implications. However, another 33 per cent said this is not something they had observed.
